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Dmitri Vrubel, known for painting kissing Brezhnev on Berlin Wall, dies at 62

Society 12:36 15 Aug, 2022

Cause of death remains unknown

Dmitri Vrubel, known for painting kissing Brezhnev on Berlin Wall, dies at 62
Dmitri Vrubel Valentina Ogorodnikova/TASS

Dmitri Vrubel, a Russian-German painter best known for his graffiti depicting the kissing communist leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker on the Berlin Wall, has died. He was 62, Qazet.az reports.

That’s according to a post on Sunday by Milena Orlova, editor-in-chief of the Art Newspaper Russia, on Facebook (banned in Russia as it’s owned by Meta Corporation, which is designated as extremist in Russia).

"Oh, how I don’t feel like being a messenger of deaths. Dima Vrubel has died. My condolences to his loved ones and friends," she said.

The cause of death is not reported. On July 14, a photo of the artist at a hospital was published on his Facebook page. The artist's wife, Viktoria Timofeyeva, said in a July 17 post that Vrubel's heart "suddenly became very weak" and disclosed that he had recovered from the coronavirus.

Vrubel was born in Moscow in 1960, and studied at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. In recent years, the painter lived in Germany.